A look at some of the more remarkable items found during 40 years of collecting all manner of recordings. For information on saving these files, see the top box on the right.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Floating On Air

Today, I'm offering up one of the prizes from my collection - a four song EP on the Air label. Air seems to have been (at least in part) a clearinghouse for productions of other song-poem companies, and that certainly seems to be the case here, with offerings from (at least) the Film City, Globe and Lee Hudson organizations.

Two of these four tracks appeared in the past on the MP3 page of the AS/PMA website, and so no doubt circulate among collectors. But the copies here are almost certainly higher quality than those I made for AS/PMA several years ago, and in addition, one of the two songs not shared in the past is actually my favorite of the four.

First up, an effort by Cara Stewart, with Lee Hudson's orchestra. This song, "Any Dance, Any Dance", is pretty much cookie cutter Cara and Lee material, but it's a sound that I love, and as a result is greatly enjoyable.

Next up, here's the one that really should have been shared. To me, this is one of the oddest records ever to have been made by Rodd Keith, appearing here as "Rod Rogers with Film City Orch." "Nosey Guy Polka" starts off with an off kilter sound, not much short of downright bizarre, and stumbles through a couple of minutes of carnival style polka music, with some equally weird lyrics. Definitely a keeper:

On to side two. Also shared on AS/PMA was Sammy Marshall's offering, "I'm Sam, the Handy Man". Like many of Sammy's records, this one strikes me as a song which actually could have been a hit, with better production, and some changes to the lyrics, AND if it had been released perhaps 8-10 years earlier than it was. That's a lot of qualifiers, but a lot fewer qualifiers towards hit status than I'd have to make for most other song-poems:

The only dull one of the batch is the final track, sung by one Ann Allen, "Show Me the Way". This is not Columbine or late period MSR bad (I'm not generally a fan of those labels), it's just a bland attempt at writing a song which actually sounds like a failed pop effort.

As to who Ann Allen is or was, that's anyone's guess. This is the only listing for that name on the AS/PMA database.

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Divshare Issue

All files uploaded prior to March, 2015, were lost by Divshare in that same month. None of the files in posts prior to this month will work. I will be updating these broken links as soon as I can. Read more about it here.

About Me

I'm the father of two amazing young women, married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and I work in the mental health field. I play several instruments and record my own music. I'm a long time record collector, hoarder of unusual, rare or unique recorded sound, musical, spoken word or other, and am glad to have found this outlet to share some of my favorite parts of it with others.